maandag 15 september 2014

Ronny

Last week met a painter, his name is Ronny. He was painting
the courtyard houses in the place where I was photographing. He asked me what I
was doing and I told him I was making portraits of widows living in the
courtyard. ‘Why?’ he asked me. I told him my first husband also died. Then he told
me his mother became a widow when she was twenty five. My focus was on photographing one
of the ladies so I had to stop my conversation with him.

When I was back home I thought about him: ‘What
did he want to tell me about his late mother?’ Today I met him again, still painting the houses white. He does it very secure and concentrated,
so at first I did not dare to disturb him. My curiosity won and I asked him
about his mother.

Four days before Ronny’s
third birthday his father died, age thirty two. He died of a heart attack in the gym.

Ronny has got a five year older sister.
Although he was very young he still keeps like six memories of his father. Ronny
thinks of him every single day, not in sadness, because over forty years have
passed, but for example when he hears an old song from before his father died:
he thinks, ‘Yes this song he has known, and hearing a newer song: no he has not
known it… ‘

In 1972, the year in which Ronny's father died, his mother used to work in a restaurant. Her
parents took care of the children in the evening, and when his sister
was older, she was Ronny’s babysitter. Twenty years later, when Ronny was
serving in the army, she started a new relation and remarried two years later.
Ronny liked his mothers’ new husband. Unfortunately, not long after they got
married, he died because of an illness. She is sixty eight years old now and has got
a lot of friends, but still Ronny thinks it is hard for her to be single.

Ronny is very proud of his mother. Everything
he has got he owes to her: his education and his manners. He is proud he and
his sister became good human beings thanks to theirmother.
Now he is a father of two himself, he has got a son of ten years old, partly
named after his father: Hendricus Hermanus Levie, and a daughter named Stéphanie, sixteen years old. Ronny
decided a while ago to quit smoking, because he does not want this to be the
reason to die from a heart attack as well.

Last Sunday August 17th, one day
before his fathers’ birthday, Ronny visited his fathers’ grave, close by his house. He cleaned
it an put plants on it. ‘It is he best taken care of grave of all the graves surrounding his grave,’ Ronny said
proudly. Sometimes Ronny repaints the golden letters on the tombstone, to make
them shine again beautifully.

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Over mij

I am an independent documentary photographer from The Netherlands, who deeply empathizes with the plight of widows because I have experienced loosing my husband myself. Upon reading a devastating international report in 2008, on the position of widows worldwide, I decided to photographically document these special women. Women who, by the 'simple' fact that their husband dies have to deal with the way different way society treats them, with demeaning cultural believes and traditions, with financial hardship.
Much of this is hidden. I want to photograph them and tell their stories.
Check also my website www.mrswidow.com